Syria has instructed the Lebanese Hizbollah to stop attacks on Israel at this stage, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the US and the American declarations of war against terrorism, Israeli scrutiny sources told Haaretz newspaper on Thursday .

Syria is on the State Department's list of countries that support terror and “there are apparently fears in Damascus that continued terrorist attacks against Israel by Hizbollah will draw American attention toward Syria,” said the sources.

Meanwhile, Hizbollah accused Washington of planning to target legitimate Middle East "resistance" movements when it retaliates for last week's terror attacks, reports said Wednesday.

"The US only sees the Middle East through Israeli eyes, this is why they spill a flood of accusations against movements of resistance and national liberation," Hizbollah said in a statement published by several newspapers, cited by AFP.

"At the same time, the US closes its eyes on the threat constituted by the Zionist entity on the entire region," it said.

Hizbollah was reacting to recent remarks by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to an Arab satellite television channel that the Lebanese guerrilla group was a threat to the region.

On Tuesday, the US ambassador to Lebanon, Vincent Battle, also said Lebanon was still harboring groups that Washington considers as "terrorist."

"These declarations show the determination of the Americans to pursue their unjust policy, a policy through which the American administration can only reap more hate from the peoples of the region," Hizbollah said.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon outside Washington Hezbollah said that it "regrets the deaths of innocent people in any part of the world."

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud also said on Monday that there was a "need to differentiate between these acts (in the United States) and between the resistance which aims at liberating the land from occupation."

Lebanese national Ziad Samir Jarrah, 26, is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of suspects in the US terror attacks – Albawaba.com